So… hardcore drug warriors out there… I have a very simple question for you…

Why?

You can’t stop people from getting high. It’s NOT POSSIBLE.

It literally does not matter how far you go, you cannot stop it.

We can’t stop heroin from getting into supermax prisons, where there are no visitors allowed, and everyone is body searched in and out.

I just had a dedicated drug warrior fully sincerely advocate that we completely seal the border, and that every vehicle, container, and person should be fully cavity searched.

When I pointed out that cavity searches didn’t stop heroin from getting in to supermax prisons, he said that we need to have full walls on all the borders, and boats to patrol the coastlines to stop smugglers.

You can’t stop people from getting high. This is not an issue of sealing the borders.

Even if you actually sealed the borders successfully, then they would just grow it here.

How exactly would you stop that?

It would require constantly patrolling millions of acres of property, both public and private; searching all greenhouses, and all forests, and all fields of any kind, at least once every 90 days… in the entire country.

Doing so… aside from the massive violations of peoples rights, would require millions of law enforcement officers dedicated to it.

That would cost more than the entire budget of the United State by the way.

Even if you manage to completely eradicate all opium poppies, and all coca plants on the planet, they will just synthesize it in labs… and by labs, I mean, any quiet room with an electrical outlet, or anywhere you can run a generator, or a blow torch.

If you completely ban all substances that people could get high with, you ban thousands of legal products with legitimate and critical uses, including a huge number of critical medications.

You also have to ban all lab equipment, or closely license and track its sale. And all chemicals of all kind… and many kinds of foods. And most kinds of flowers.

And all machine tools, and glass blowing equipment… and blow torches, and pipes and tubes and sand…

And you’ll have to dig out and burn out millions and millions of acres of plants.

We have 7,500 miles of border. We have 13,000 miles of coastline.

You can make it a death penalty offense to posses, sell, or use drugs, or get high. Many countries do in fact… and people still get high.

This dedicated drug warrior said that it didn’t matter what it took, it didn’t matter what it cost… It didn’t matter if it wouldn’t work at all… That we had to do it anyway.

When I asked why, he said:

“Because to do otherwise would be to surrender”

Then I asked “Surrender what? To who?”

He said “Surrender to the junkies and the dealers”

I asked “Surrender what?”

He refused to answer.

And again I asked “Why”

He refused to answer.

I said “You’re advocating a police state, in order to stop people from getting high. Why?”

He refused to answer.

So… I have a very simple question for you…

You cannot possibly stop people who want to get high, from getting high.

You can’t make it illegal enough. You can’t ban or control enough. It’s not possible… you have to know that it isn’t possible..

Prohibition PROVED beyond all possibility of doubt that it’s impossible.

The last 45 years of the “War on Drugs” have proved beyond all possibility of doubt that it’s impossible.

But you still think we have to do it… No matter what it takes… No matter the harm it causes… No matter what rights get violated…No matter how much power it gives the state. No matter how much it costs…

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

The Challenge

In the aftermath of the most recent terrorist attacks in Paris, a commenter calling herself Mrs. Lemuel Struthers on Reason’s Hit and Run threw down the gauntlet:

What I’d really like to hear is a libertarian/classical liberal approach to approaching this problem of a minority of anti-liberals within a society engaging in war-like behavior (murder) while using the values of the society they live in to promote their ideology. The enemy within – if you will. While at the same time demographic and immigration trends tend to support the likely enlargement of populations who will tolerate and even encourage that ideology.
…
And, just to be clear, I was really asking how France should address its issues from a an-cap perspective, not the USA.

I take up her challenge with this post. The post actually contains two mini essays. One about France like she asked. But first, I will start with an essay about Ancapistan… the one she said she wasn’t interested in (because the essay about France would be incomprehensible without it)! ;) » Read more

Even if Rand Paul is not elected president, he has already performed the country a great service. No, I’m not talking about the pending expiration of Section 215 of the Patriot Act. It will likely be a temporary victory at best. What Rand Paul is accomplishing is that he’s exposing some of the contradictions of the Republican Party’s establishment wing.

What Paul is doing is exposing the same GOP establishsment types who support every shift to the left and support every big government program in the name of “moving to the center” as frauds and liars. All Paul is simply doing is letting them go hysterical.

Take for example former New Hampshire Governor and Chief of Staff to George H.W. Bush John Sununu comments:

Once the primary is over, Sununu said it’s “stupid” for Republican voters to not back whomever wins the primary, with one exception, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

Sununu said while he is tired of “stupid conservatives giving Democrats the election,” After Paul’s comments blaming Republican hawks for creating ISIS this week he now believes Paul’s national security positions are too extreme “isolationist,” and “to the left of Barack Obama.”

He added, “Frankly, I can not imagine Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) as commander in chief.”

If Rand Paul accomplishes nothing else this campaign cycle, he exposed the self-described “big tent” Republicans as nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites. Most of these same guys are the ones who criticize conservatives who support primaring more moderate Republicans.

I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.

Neocon William Kristol, writing on the pages of USA Today writes that “We were right to invade Iraq in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein […]Even with the absence of caches of weapons of mass destruction…”

It’s quite clear that not only has Kristol not learned the lessons of Iraq but also is willing to rewrite the history in such a way to exonerate the Bush administration from its failings.

When President Obama took office, Iraq was calm, al-Qaeda was weakened and ISIS did not exist. Iran, meanwhile, was under pressure from abroad (due to sanctions) and at home (due to popular discontent, manifested by the Green uprising in the summer of 2009).

The Obama administration threw it all away. It failed to support the dissidents in Iran in 2009, mishandled the Iraqi elections in 2010, removed all U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, and allowed the Syrian civil war to spiral out of control from 2011 on.

Oh yeah I forgot, things were going great in Iraq until Barack Hussein Obama took office. If only the U.S. got more involved in the Iraqi elections (whatever that means) and “supported” dissidents in Iran (whatever that means) and kept U.S. troops in a bit longer (say another 100 years or so?) why today we might well be witnessing Jeffersonian democracy or a Madisonian republic in the Middle East! And the whole bit about WMD not being found in Iraq? Details. Who cares!

Nearly 4,500 Americans died, tens of thousands more were wounded, and $2 trillion was squandered in a war to destroy weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

And though the war disposed of a bloody dictator, Saddam Hussein, it ushered in something worse, at least for the United States: A sectarian civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and gave birth to Islamist terrorism, now under the banner of the Islamic State.

The more legitimate Afghanistan War was orphaned, turning it into a quagmire, and allies were alienated.

Today, Iraq is splintered and reeling. With the capture this week of the key Sunni city of Ramadi, ISIL is firmly in control of one chunk, and Iran — the war’s big winner — has great sway over another.

Okay, fair enough. But, but Obama set a premature timetable for retreat from Iraq before the mission could be accomplished…

Obama’s policies have indeed made things worse. But in arguing that he should have kept troops in Iraq longer, his critics skip over the inconvenient fact that he pulled out on a schedule negotiated by Bush. And, of course, had Bush not launched the war in the first place, there would have been no such mistakes to make.

There’s just no getting around those fundamental facts. The Neocon experiments have failed.

Benjamin Netanyahu is an incredibly gifted speaker – no question about that. Never can I recall any particular speech being met with so much anticipation, trepidation, and controversy as the speech that he delivered to a joint session of congress just days ago. What is it about this man – Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of Israel that causes emotions to run so high?

Among conservatives, evangelical conservatives in-particular, to be the slight bit critical of Netanyahu or his policies is akin to hating the Jewish people. We are told we must “stand with” or “support” Israel (whatever standing with or supporting entails) no matter what.

At the risk of being met with these criticisms and others, my position is that Benjamin Netanyahu is a politician who has a geopolitical agenda. Israel is another nation which has a government that has its flaws as all governments do. I do not intend these statements to be pejorative but to bring both the PM and his government back into the realm of the real world.

Let me call what Netanyahu’s speech what it was: a political speech. Political speeches, by their nature, are designed to promote a point-of-view. Stretching the truth to its absolute limits, hyperbole, and minimizing opposing opinion is part and parcel of political speeches. In this particular speech, we are to believe that the current negotiations will only “pave the way” for Iran to getting the bomb. Iran is years or even months away from getting the bomb.

The thing is, Iran has been years or months away from getting nuclear weapons for 20 or so years now according to Netanyahu. As Murtaza Hussain writing for The Interceptpoints out:

“The conclusion from this history is inescapable. Over the course of more than 20 years, Benjamin Netanyahu has made false claims about nuclear weapons programs in both Iran and Iraq, inventing imaginary timelines for their development, and making public statements that contradicted the analysis of his own intelligence advisers.

Despite this, he continues to be treated by lawmakers and media figures as a credible voice on this issue.”

Jon Stewart makes many of the same observations (below). Both Iraq and Iran were supposedly getting close to acquiring nuclear weapons. Obviously, nothing of the kind was ever found in Iraq following Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Obviously, I am no fan of the despotic theocratic regime in Iran. The idea of such a regime acquiring nuclear weapons is quite frightening. And while the concept of mutually assured destruction may or may not be an effective strategy, I see no harm in diplomacy and regular unannounced inspections of Iran’s nuclear programs.